


call me home & i'll call your name

by AssembletheAvengers



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Clintasha - Fandom, Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Avengers - Freeform, Canon Compliant, Clintasha - Freeform, Deaf Hawkeye, Endgame compliant, F/M, Fix It Fic, Hurt/Comfort, Marvel - Freeform, Mission Fic, Romance, cuz assassin romance, endgame fix it fic, i will go down with clintasha, i'll fix this trust me, kind of at least
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:27:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23567587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AssembletheAvengers/pseuds/AssembletheAvengers
Summary: "And now she's gone, Natasha. And I-" he couldn't finish the sentence and she slipped one of her arms out of her grip, bringing it up to card through his hair. "Me too," He buried his head in her neck instead and he just breathed her in and felt her heart beating for another moment. Endgame/Clintasha Fix it Fic - Canon Compliant
Relationships: Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, Clintasha, Hawkeye/Black Widow
Comments: 3
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is an Endgame/Clintasha fix it fic because thanks Joss Whedon. It’s canon compliant, trust me.  
> I do not own the rights to anything Marvel. If I did, Clint and Natasha would have their own movie and Hawkeye would still be deaf.  
> I only own my storyline.  
> Constructive criticism is more than welcome and reviews are like crack.  
> Enjoy.

Clint woke up violently. None of that fluttering eyelids bullshit.

He shot upright, covered in sweat and breathing hard. The room was too dark to be any help when it came to fighting off the encroaching panic.

But then a hand curled around his upper arm, pale enough that it almost glowed in the dark.

His dark blond hair was matted to his forehead and his breathing was getting out of control.

Natasha sat up, leaned over the edge of the bed to turn the lamp on and grabbed his hearing aid off the bedside table. Clint was squinting in the light now, trying to focus on her but the ringing in his ears was distracting and the lack of oxygen was getting to him.

“Moy sokol,” her accent rolled across the silence and she swung her leg over his lap until she was straddling him. He wasn’t even making eye contact so she couldn’t even sign to him, he just twisted his hands into the sheets underneath him and struggled to pull oxygen into his lungs. Her empty hand pressed against his cheek and Clint was still stiff, even as she worked to fit his hearing aid into his ear. He flinched as the sound poured in all at once when she succeeded.

“Hey, hey, look at me.” She slid her other hand down until his face was cupped in her palms. There was no recognition. “Barton,” she snapped. “Breathe.” One of her hands fell and her fingers wrapped tightly around his wrist as she brought his hand up to flatten against her chest above her heartbeat. “Focus on this. Right here. Vdok, vydykhat.” She exaggerated her breathing and squeezed his hand, threading her fingers tightly into his hair, flooding him with as much stimuli as she could to pull him back. For a few more minutes, things carried on like that until he collapsed forward, breathing almost back to normal again except for a few hitches every couple of breaths.

Clint’s forehead pressed against her shoulder and his hands slid around her back to grasp tightly at the fabric of his tee shirt she was wearing. Natasha’s arms wound around his broad shoulders and she held him.

“You’re ok, Barton. You’re safe.” He shook his head along her collar bone.

“But they’re not,” his miserable voice was hoarse and Natasha paused for a minute before sighing into his hair and tightening her hold on him.

Laura. Cooper. Lila. Nathaniel.

His entire family had vanished around him.

“I know.” That was all there was to say. He dreamt of them more nights than he didn’t. Some nights, it was still his ledger that haunted him. But more often, he dreamt of the snap, of Lila vanishing in front of him, and the hour he spent scouring his property for his family. He dreamt of the gut-wrenching terror he felt as he dialed Natasha’s number wondering if she was gone too and this was his own personal hell.

The guilt killed him.

They were just gone. He couldn’t get them back. And so he’d what? Moved on?

That’s exactly what he’d done. Picked right back up where he’d left off with Nat before Laura. And he hated himself for it.

Natasha was angry with herself too.

Her niece and nephews had trusted her. Laura was her friend.

They’d been gone two years and Natasha had just taken her friend’s place.

Clint and Natasha had only ever pretended to be good people when the sad reality of the fact was that they were and always would be assassins who did what they needed to do in order to survive.

And this was no different.

They did what they had to do.

His skin was burning where it was touching hers. It felt like a physical reminder of all of his transgressions, of how he’d moved on.

After a few minutes of the deafening silence, Natasha disentangled herself from his arms and climbed off his lap.

“Come on,” she stretched her hand out. He looked at her with questioning eyes as he reached for her hand and let her pull him off the bed.

He didn’t ask. He didn’t need to, really. He trusted her more than anyone. He trusted her more than Laura even.

Natasha pulled a pair of yoga pants on under his SHIELD shirt then turned to face him with a faded Black Sabbath tee shirt in her hands. He stood still as she gently eased it over his head then left him to put it the rest of the way on.

They ended up in the gym a few minutes later. Clint still hadn’t said a thing, even as she backed away from him before ducking under the ropes of the makeshift sparring ring. He followed her in and squared up, rolling his shoulders to loosen them. She arched a thin red eyebrow in way of asking if he was ready. He nodded sharply, exhaled deeply and then lunged forward, throwing the first punch. She blocked and his left jab was not far behind the right. His blows were propelled by sheer anger. There was hatred in his eyes that she could see wasn’t directed at her but it was still there; hot fire burning behind cold walls.

Natasha blocked another one of Clint's fists, knocking his arm out of the way, and using it as leverage to flip herself around his body, landing lithely behind him. She kicked the back of his legs, sending him stumbling forward and effectively messing up his near perfect balance.

“She would want you to be happy.”

Clint scowled and ducked out of her lethal hold, dropping down and kicking her feet out from under her in one smooth motion and sending her on her back.

“You don’t know that.” Before he could pin her, she vaulted backwards into a handstand, scissoring her thighs around his chest, bringing her partner crashing to the mat.

“She _loved_ you. Why would she want anything else?”

He wrapped his hand around her ankle, pulling Natasha off of his chest and down beside him.

“She’s my wife.” He said darkly, as they laid on the mat beside each other, panting.

“She’s gone, Barton. You can’t hold onto her forever. You can’t punish yourself. You can’t hate yourself every morning that you wake up next to me.” She paused and he could almost hear her heart hammering. “You can’t hate me or this won’t...” He glanced at her sharply and then flipped and pinned her arms to the mat, tilting his head down so he was inches from her lips and could feel her staccato breaths fanning across his face.

“Listen and listen carefully Natasha.” She met his eyes and held them unwaveringly. “I have never and could never hate you. Don’t ever think that. This… this is all me. You want to know why I can barely even live with myself right now?” he didn’t wait for her answer. “You’ve always been it for me. Since the second I dropped my bow and you lowered your gun. You’ve been… it. You didn’t want me.” She flinched and opened her mouth to protest.

“Listen.” He reminded. “Then Fury sent me on that fuck off mission and I met Laura.” His voice cracked. “And… she wanted me. All the affection I’d been chasing with you… she returned it. Then we had Cooper and I am not my father, Natasha. I couldn’t be like him. I wasn’t going to leave her. So I didn’t. I married her. I never… never loved her like I loved you. She knew that. She was okay with that. She loved you too. We had Cooper. Then Lila. Then Nate.”

Tears welled in his eyes and he dropped his head to her shoulder, breathing shakily. She held still, heart racing and mind working to not let her feelings manifest on her face.

“And our kids loved you. I loved her. She loved me. We were happy. But we weren’t _in love_ Tasha. That was always reserved for somebody else. I felt like a piece of shit.” He scoffed. “She’s- was a great woman. A great wife. A great mother. She deserved someone’s whole heart. But she didn’t want it. She wanted our family to be whole.”

Natasha was losing her personal battle. She had no idea. How had she never known any of this? Suddenly his weight on her was getting too heavy and breathing was getting harder by the second.

“And now she’s gone, Natasha. And I-” he couldn’t finish the sentence and she slipped one of her arms out of her grip, bringing it up to card through his hair.

“Me too,”

He turned his head so that his face was buried in her neck instead and he just breathed her in and felt her heart beating for another moment before he rolled off her and to his feet.

Natasha took the hand he offered and allowed him to pull her to her feet. Clint smoothed a sweat soaked piece of half blonde, half red hair off her forehead, tucking it behind her ear.

“Coffee?” she offered.

“Coffee.”

* * *

By the time they were both showered and seated at the rickety piece of wood they used as a dining table, the sun was finally coming up. Their apartment building was waking up. Kids getting ready for school were running in the hallways. Dogs were barking, asking to be taken out for their morning walk.

Both SHIELD agents were watching the sun come up through the tattered drapes covering the tiny ass window in their tiny ass living room.

The silence between the two of them was broken by Natasha’s phone ringing. Clint was busy stirring an ungodly amount of sugar into his coffee to care much about the side of the conversation he could hear until he heard her sign off.

“We’ll be right there.” 

He arched a questioning eyebrow in her direction.

“Rogers needs a hand. He’ll brief us when we get there.” Clint nodded once and downed the remainder of his coffee in one swallow.

* * *

The goal was simple. Rhodes needed a hand with a weapons dealer in Karachi. They were low on soldiers and contractors after the snap and he had a few perfectly good spies waiting back in New York. Rogers was essentially unavailable. He was unwilling to leave his support group behind, especially when he had others to help out his friend.

Clint agreed a little too quickly. He needed a distraction. Natasha was not far behind and they were wheels up within the afternoon.

* * *

Rhodes met them on the ground, War Machine suit and all with a briefing packet and a couple of Airmen.

Clint scoffed, some of his old mischief and arrogance returning to his face as he read through the intel.

“This is… a two day mission, tops. Nat and I can be in and out by Thursday night.” Rhodes smirked.

“All yours, Barton.”

Natasha grinned. It’d been a while since they got a mission like this. Old school, no monsters, no magic. It was everything they were ever trained for. This was what they were good at.

“Thanks for the call.” Natasha said.

“Thanks for coming, Romanoff.” Rhodes nodded. “Y’all got this? I’mma head out.”

“We got this.”

He said goodbye with a mock salute and left his airmen to show the assassin’s to their temporary quarters.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an Endgame/Clintasha fix it fic because thanks Joss Whedon. It’s canon compliant, trust me.   
> I do not own the rights to anything Marvel. If I did, Clint and Natasha would have their own movie and Hawkeye would still be deaf.   
> I only own my storyline.  
> Constructive criticism is more than welcome and reviews are like crack.   
> Enjoy.

The mission was simple.

Infiltrate. Acquire the target. Engage the target. Deliver the target back to Rhodes.

Cheragh Abbasi was a simple man, driven by power and money. Enough so that he almost made their job too easy. A quickly executed request for a business transaction was enough to get a response and draw him out for a meeting tomorrow.

For now, Clint and Natasha were settled in a barracks room on the Airforce base, lazily flipping through already memorized files. Barton was brooding. It wasn’t the focused kind of brooding she grew used to when it came to missions with her partner. It was the same depression that had become his _new_ normal.

And it was not going to fly when she was relying on him for cover and for him to protect himself.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” One perfect red eyebrow arched just barely because he hadn’t so much as glanced in her direction. But _of course,_ he knew.

She had a few options. She could coddle him and try and coax him out of his haze of self-hatred with feigned sweetness, or she could goad him. She could draw out the darkness and try and pull the _old him_ back out.

It was an easy decision really. They didn’t have time for sweetness and words because she needed her partner back _now._

“Wondering if you’ve gone as soft as you seem.” He heard the challenge in her voice. He knew she was baiting him. He knew he should ignore her, but then she continued. “Because in about 3 hours I am going to be pretending to be somebody I’m not with Abbasi’s snipers watching my every move and I’d prefer it if my backup was less than suicidal.”

Her Black Widow mask slid in place over the simmering guilt she felt and watched as his walls came up too.

“Romanoff,” _Shit,_ he was pissed. His fist was clenched on top of the table and his eyes were harder than she’d seen them in a long time. All crushing sadness was gone, in its place nothing but unbridled anger and darkness. She hadn’t seen it in a long time. By the time he’d been sent after her, the unchecked teenage rage was mostly under control. He had more control over his emotions than even she did. There were rare occasions when Natasha pushed him too far, or when a mission broke him down that she had seen this. And she knew she was seeing it now because he was letting her. “I am not soft,” he was glaring holes into the table now.

“We both know you pulled punches this morning,”

_Silence._

“Hit me, Barton.” 

Alarmed blue-grey eyes flashed upwards and a hollow scoff tore from his chest.

“You’re insane.”

“Maybe,”

“I’m not going to fucking punch you, Natasha.”

“Soft,” she whispered back. His eyes narrowed again. “What makes you think you’ll even land a hit?” her voice was dangerous now, daring him to baby _her._ He stayed frozen and emotionless, even as she stood, wrapped the collar of his shirt around her fist and dragged him out of his chair. “I dare you to hit me, Barton. If you’ve gone soft, if you’re going to treat me like I’m breakable then I don’t think we can do this job because I’m not going under hostile snipers’ scopes without your-”

Then he was shoving her off of him and throwing the punch with no warning.

Natasha’s head whipped to the side and his eyes blazed brighter than before as he stared at his fist and felt the telltale ache in his knuckles.

“What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?” he hissed.

“Wanted to see if you’d pull it at the last second.” She shrugged, moving her jaw back and forth with a small smile.

“You’re insane, woman.” He scowled in disgust.

“Probably.”

He was on her in the next second, crowding her against the wall and breathing hard.

“If you think you are going in there with less than perfect backup then you don’t know me at all, Natasha.”

His eyes softened just a bit then and his fingers brushed over the budding bruise on her cheek.

Then he was gone, disappearing into the bathroom and leaving her to return to studying the files.

Natasha was _still_ studying the file when Clint emerged from the shower, hair wet and towel clinging to his hips. His following smirk drew a genuine smile from Natasha because it was so _Clint_ that she bit her lip to keep the borderline joy off her face.

“See something you like?”

She scoffed and effectively schooled the appreciation off her face as she made a show of looking him up and down.

“All I see is a wet bird,”

“You wound me, Tasha.” He placed one hand over his heart with all the drama in the world.

“You’re too fragile, Barton.” She rolled her eyes.

His blue grey eyes narrowed at his partner’s answering smirk, even as she feigned turning her attention back to the files. He was not going to do this again. No more taunting.

She felt the air shift and stiffened when Clint’s hot breath was suddenly on the back of her neck and she could feel the heat and humidity radiating from his still damp skin. His toned arms were suddenly on either side of her, hands grasping the desk in front of her, a weak attempt at trapping her.

All air of playfulness was gone and in its place was the familiar darkness that had been glossed over in their years with the Avengers. The electric adrenaline. The dangerous attraction. The red ledgers. All existed under the surface for so many years. Covered up by kids, brain washings, childish love interests, attempts at apple pie lives and goddamn heroics. In all of that, the reality had gotten lost.

_They were fucking murderers._

They were dangerous. They were the best assassins SHIELD - _shit, the world –_ had ever seen.

They’d evolved, yes. They’d improved, matured, made up for some of what they’d done.

They’d played good cop because they were living in the light for once in their lives.

But now…now the darkness was back. The family they had acquired for themselves was ripped away, only a few remaining.

Thanos had taken away what made them happy. Just like the Red Room had. Just like the Circus and the Army had. Just like their pasts that seemed so damn far away.

“Barton,” she warned.

He growled darkly at the use of his last name in a way that would have made any other woman shudder. Natasha forced the impending reaction down and held still.

“Fragile?” his voice was somehow everywhere around her and it overwhelmed her even before he started mouthing at her shoulder, slowly making his way up her throat, leaving a burning trail in his wake. Controlling her breathing was getting progressively more difficult. Heat was pooling in her stomach and _shit_ they hadn’t played this game in so long. “Is that what I am?”

“Your ego damn sure is.” But the sarcasm and bite was lost in the breathlessness of her voice.

“I know what you’re doing,” he breathed the words directly into her ear.

“Razve?”

_Is that so?_

“Da. Eto to chto vy khoteli, Tasha?”

 _Yes. Is this what you wanted, Tasha?”_

His hands brushed her hair back over her shoulder, fingers trailing along her neck for good measure. Anyone else might have missed the barely there intake of breath but he didn’t.

“Pust budet tak,”

_So be it._

And then Clint Barton was gone, Hawkeye left in his place, cold, hard, unrelenting and all business.

Natasha steeled herself, locked ‘Tasha’ behind her walls and fell into the role of Black Widow.

Strike Team Delta was _back._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If i was a bow, reviews are my arrows.

**Author's Note:**

> I need reviews like I need water.


End file.
